Reapers (29 page)

“
What happened?” asked
Kara.

Ariel shook her head. “A trap. They
set a trap for us, for them. It seems that they’re after Peter, but
we don’t know why.”

Kara and David shared a
look.

“
Can you use those?” Ariel
looked at Kara’s wings. “Can you
fly
?” she added hesitantly. “We
could really use them to our advantage.”

Kara’s wings fluttered
behind her. “Uh, I’m not…well, I haven’t really practiced. But I
think I can.” And then she added firmly, “Yes, yes I
can
.”

Kara felt a glimmer of hope. If she
could somehow use her transformation to do good, to save mortal
lives and souls, then maybe the oracles had been wrong. She was
determined to do as much good as she could before she lost the
ability to tell between friend and foe, before the darkness took
over, and she was no longer herself.

David smiled at her confidently. She
looked away, both a little embarrassed and pleased.

“
Good, that’s good,” said
Ariel, staring at Kara’s wings with a mixture of interest and a
little fear. “I have a feeling
this
is exactly the miracle that we need, and we
desperately need one. It just might save them.”

Kara wasn’t sure how much Ariel knew,
how much Mr. Patterson had told Horizon. Did they know that she was
transforming into a killer of angels? Somehow she had a feeling her
boss hadn’t told them everything.

Kara positioned herself next to David
in front of the green, stirring waters of the vega tanks as her own
insides stirred with the uncertainty of her future.

“
Get back safe. May the
souls protect you, and all of us,” said Ariel.

Kara and David stepped into the green
waters.

The sky was blood
-red. The sunset was a ball of red fire. The
devastation in the streets of downtown London reminded Kara of her
own hometown. A darkness had swept the busy streets like a plague,
leaving London barren, dead, and scorching with fire and
smoke.

There
were no signs of the living. The few people that they did
see lay dead in the streets. Their blackened, lifeless eyes showed
only their last expressions of fear. The body of a young man, his
future no longer before him, lay in the gutter like a crumpled
piece of paper. The mortal bodies had become mere vessels for the
denomites now. It was clear that the reapers had been here. The
city that would normally have been teeming with life was quiet and
dead.

David kept throwing nervous glances her way, as though he
felt at any minute now she would transform into a winged
monster
and
attack him. What good was it to have wings if in the end they were
going to do evil?

She did her best to hide the hurt she felt and
focus
ed on
saving her friends.

You can
still change the future
, the white oracle had said. Kara was
determined to try.

Tall stone buildings rose up on either side
of the miles of
shops on Oxford Street. They passed a red double-decker bus that
had crashed into a shop. Kara peered inside, but it was empty.
There were no living mortals anywhere.

They passed a shop with paper sunglasses on
display
. A
huge sign in the window said
Solar Eclipse, Sunday, August
18
^th
.

Their
footsteps echoed along the street and mixed with the sounds
of the fires that crackled and popped. Kara feared the worst for
her two friends. Where were they?

Just as they began the next block, h
er wings felt heavy suddenly.
They were pulling her down, as though some invisible entity had
attached itself to her back. She staggered. An icy cool feeling
crept inside her, and she shuddered violently. Her vision blurred
as she tried to blink the spots from her eyes.

And then she felt
the darkness of an overwhelming feeling of power.
It was intoxicating. It churned deep inside her like an icy storm.
It wanted her to succumb to it, to set it free.

With all her inner strength, Kara forced it back down into
the little pit of
gloom
where it lived. She knew it was there now. She kept it
there. She forced it there.

And then
the feeling was gone.

“
Kara, what is it?”

Kara
blinked and her vision cleared.

“
Nothing,” she lied.

She
avoided David’s eyes. She couldn’t bear the fear she knew was in
them.

“
Let’s keep moving.”

“
It’s
not
nothing, is it?” pressed David. “I know you, Kara. I know
you’re trying to be brave, but I know you’re scared. I’m your
boyfriend, remember?”

Kara
’s mood brightened a little at the mention of
boyfriend
. He was a light in her darkness.

“
With everything we’ve been through together,” he continued.
“I know you can fight this.”

Kara was moved by David
’s faith in her. They had been through a
lot. She wasn’t the same scared, unsure guardian she had been when
she had first died and started to work for the legion.

She looked
at David and wished she could stay with him
forever.

“
You’re the strongest angel I know,” David smiled. “You have
a good heart—theoretically speaking—and a good soul.”

Kara
watched the end of the street as they walked.

“
My soul,” she said absentmindedly. “W
hat’s the point of all this if I have no soul? What’s the
point of life as a mortal or as a guardian? Without our souls…we’re
nothing. What happens when I don’t remember who I am and become…and
become this dark, terrible thing? What happens then, David? I won’t
exist anymore. My soul will rot, and I’ll be a creature. My soul
will be dead.”

David sighed heavily. “Stop saying
that.”

“
I have to.
I
have to get used to
it.
You
have to
get used to it. You have to be prepared for when I—”

Someone screamed.

“
That’s Jenny!”

Kara tore down the street, but the
weight of her wings made it seem like running with a fifty-pound
backpack. David passed her, and she knew for a fact her wings were
slowing her down. She would have to do something about it, and
fast.

They rounded the corner, and in the
middle of the street Kara could see that Sam, Todd and Valerie from
the CDD unit were trying to fight off two reapers. The guardians
brandished their soul blades, but before Kara and David could warn
them that their weapons would have no effect, the reapers hacked
through them. Their bodies fell to the ground in pieces, and their
angel souls were consumed by the reapers’ scythes. Nothing was left
of them but piles of ash.

And that’s when she saw
Jenny.

Her angel essence dripped from a large
cut over her eye. Her bow lay broken in half at her feet. She was
using the sharp head of her last silver arrow like a sword as she
pierced and kicked the imp infestation that was swarming over
Peter. She was using only her left arm, because her right arm was
gone.

A dozen imps pulled, clawed and
stabbed at Peter. Even with Jenny hacking them away two at a time,
there were too many. She disappeared under a wave of
imps.

A cry died in Kara’s throat as she
ran.

The imps pulled and tore Peter’s body
as he screamed in anguish. They sliced him open everywhere that he
had skin. They slipped their tiny gnarled hands inside his body,
searching. Finally, two imps grabbed his right arm and sliced it
open. They dug their fingers in and pulled out a crystal
key.

They had the key.

“
The key! We have the
key!” the imps chanted, and jumped around like a bunch of monkeys
at the zoo.

“
Key! Key!
Key!”

Kara felt the darkness flicker inside
her again, but she managed to push it down.

The reapers slowly made their way
toward Jenny and Peter. The imps scattered as the reapers
neared.

“
The eighteens! The Dark
Gods will rise! The eighteens is coming!” screeched an imp as he
scampered away with the key.

David ran harder.

Kara could see the desperation in his
movements as he ran to save the lives of his friends. But they were
too far away. They would never make it in time. The reapers would
kill her friends, just like they had killed the other
angels.

And that’s when Kara knew. It was now
or never.

Kara opened her wings, and with every
fiber of her angel being she pushed down as hard as she
could.

Like a kite caught in a gust of wind,
Kara took flight. She was so surprised at her own strength that for
a second she forgot to flap down again, and she started to drop.
Pulling her wings toward her body like a great breaststroke, she
soared through the air like a jet.

She banked sharply and swerved as she
flew past David who was running below her and hadn’t seen her yet.
Her great wings beat like a well-oiled machine. She was a
machine.

She could see Peter and Jenny now.
They were not moving. She banked and slowed. She tucked in her
wings as she had watched the blue jays do it countless times from
her bedroom window, and she started to drop.

The reapers stood next to Peter and
Jenny and examined the two injured angels as they prepared to
devour their souls.

Kara pinned her wings to her side and
dove.

David’s shouts were muffled by the
sound of wind in her ears.

She squinted against the force of the
wind in her eyes and focused on her target.

And then she crashed right into one of
the two reapers.

It wasn’t the graceful landing she had
hoped to achieve, but the effect was instantaneous.

The reapers dropped their weapons as
they went sprawling on the ground.

Kara stood beside her
friends.

The reapers whirled around, but they
tensed at the sight of Kara’s wings. Even though she couldn’t see
their faces behind their hoods, she could sense their hesitation
and confusion. They did not hesitate for long.

But Kara was ready, and before they
could grab their scythes again she grabbed hold of both her
friends. With one under each arm, she pushed off hard and beat the
air with great big strokes. Even with the weight of her two friends
her great wings were powerful, and she soared high into the air,
away from the reapers’ grasps.

Even though her friends were safely
clutched to her chest, they still weren’t conscious and lay limp in
her arms like ragdolls. She feared for them. The reapers hadn’t
taken their souls, but they were not out of danger.

Jenny’s essence poured out of her left
shoulder socket like a tap of shining waters. Her M-suit was like
tissue paper, and any minute now it would tear. Jenny’s soul would
be lost without a body to contain it. She was losing too much of
her essence, too quickly.

Peter wasn’t in better shape. His
M-suit was shredded, like he’d been in a meat grinder. It was
amazing that the few tattered pieces that were left could keep it
together. His angel essence trickled out of him in the
wind.

Their angel souls hung by a thread,
and she had to get them back to Horizon soon before they succumbed.
Kara wasn’t an angel killer yet, and in a desperate attempt to
prove to herself that she wasn’t, she was determined to take her
injured friends to safety.

She banked sharply to the
right, but her legs dangled below her awkwardly. She still hadn’t
mastered flight, and it took every bit of her concentration to keep
beating her wings so she wouldn’t plummet to earth. She just didn’t
know
what
to do
with her legs, so she locked her ankles together and tried to do a
cool Superman pose. It wasn’t perfect, but it would do for
now.

The reapers appeared to have gone. The
streets below her were silent and empty. There were no traces of
the scurrying imps, but no signs of mortals either.

The imps had possession of the key.
Kara wasn’t sure exactly how or what that would mean to the legion,
but she had a feeling she would find out soon enough.

As she flew back in the direction from
which she and David had come, she caught a glimpse of him below. He
ran below her, and she could see a huge smile on his face as he
leaped in the air and waved at her excitedly.

“
Shotgun! I’m next for a
ride!”

She heard him cheer. She smiled at
him. Even if the legion had failed to keep the key safe, Kara still
felt hopeful that this wasn’t the end, and that somehow they would
still stop the archfiends—they had no choice.

She felt hope because she hadn’t
turned into a monster, not yet. She had used her wings for better,
not worse, and she had saved her friends. The oracle had said there
was always a chance to change the future. Even if it appeared
ominous and grim, the future could be changed. She was going to
change it.